Little Things

I saw something traumatic in the park today, so it's a good thing everything else today has been great. Examples:

The kids were good this morning. I let D play with my hair because he has never pulled it before. He was making some weird noises and stroking something across my head. Then Ang explained that he was pretending to shave my head because they had their heads shaved last week. Haha! He also repeated “okay” when I just randomly said it, which was really exciting! We also got him to say 'Ajutor!'

I was fanning myself this morning and then I realized that G must be hot, too. So I started fanning him. He looked confused at first and then put on this face of utter bliss and giggled. It was the cutest thing of my life.

N said a word really well today, so I opened my arms for a big hug. He yelled Nu! And shook his head. I looked really sad like I was going to cry and then he felt bad and rand up and kissed my hand.

We only have two weeks left. I can’t believe that! In two weeks, I’ll be gone. I’ll never see my kids again. I won’t even really know how they’re doing or where they go. I'm excited to go home, but I feel guilty about that because I'm leaving these kids here alone. They have workers, but they are there  to provide for their physical needs, not emotional needs. The next interns aren't even going to be coming for another month and a half! I hope the kids don't regress too much. I get to go home to my parents and they don't even have any and most never will.

I fell in love with 2 older kids at the hospital today. One of them, Danny, was 15 and got drug by a horse. He didn’t talk to us much at first, and then Kelsey let him play with her iphone and he would throw us mischievous looks every time he died in Temple run and say “I’m dead!” He was so funny.

And Peter was in the room, too. He got hit by lightning and liked to talk a lot. His hands were burned, so he couldn’t play with the iphone, but he watched Danny and talked to us. At one point I started fanning him because it was burning hot in the room. He thought it was the funniest thing on the planet. Then all 3 of us (Kelsey, Megan, and I) were fanning him and he just laughed like a king.

Some of the girls gave E in the hospital today a Mohawk. Chelsea and I were the last ones in the room and I was holding her and then 5 kids walked in to stare at us. I had to make awkward conversation with them in my crappy Romanian. It was rough, but E kept smiling up at me, so I got through it.

I got Scotty to smile a lot today by tickling him. He’s growing some teeth now and looks like a little redneck missing his teeth instead of gaining them. It’s great. His feet were peeling awfully today, so I put some lotion on them. They looked like the tectonic plates at the end of the world.

Where is Todd?

Yesterday when we went to the hospital, Todd (my favorite kids) was gone! I’m terrified that he’s ended up at one of the other orphanages. A lot of the other orphanages are horrible, like the stereotypical ones they show in movies in the states. (Ours is pretty great, though.) We have never been allowed in any of the other orphanages. But when kids from them end up in the hospital, we are able to see their behavior, and therefore surmise how they are treated where they live. Some go crazy with attention and climb all over you and some of them won’t let you touch them at all and smack your hand away or retract from your touch. They have RAD, and you can tell that they sit in their cribs all day everyday. Todd cannot go to one of these places, but I don’t know where he went. And there's nothing I can do about it. Bah! Hopefully he shows up in our orphanage. Sometimes the kids will disappear from the hospital for a while and then appear again later. We never really know where they go or anything.

Continuation:

The second day of the midsemester trip, we went to church in Bucharest. We got there early because we didn’t know how long it would take for us to get there. We were taking pictures in front of the sign when we first got there. A pair of elders walked by and looked really confused, but didn’t say anything to us. We went inside. Kelsey had burnt her arm on her hair dryer that morning (she was leaning over comically because she had to plug it into an outlet in a different room in the hostel since ours didn’t work) so we went in the kitchen for her to run it under cold water. I decided to look for some ice in the freezer. An elder walked in the room and looked extremely confused about who we were. Then Kelsey said “hello” in English. Then he was extra confused and said “hi.” Then I explained that I was leaning into the freezer in a random church building because I was looking for ice for Kelsey’s burn. “We don’t have any.” “I realize that now.” It was a great conversation.

Before and after sacrament meeting everyone came to ask us who we were and to kiss us on the cheeks and to practice their English. I've never felt more popular in my life. A nice English speaking Romanian translated for us into translators instead of just whispering behind us like the missionaries do in Iasi.

Kelsey had an awesome experience meeting a woman in the ward who her sister taught about the church 8 years ago when she was on her mission here. You’ll have to read Kelsey’s blog for that.

A kindly old lady in the ward who considers herself the mother of the missionaries in Bucharest invited us over for lunch. The four of us squished into her tiny apartment with 12 missionaries and her. The food was great and very traditional. It might be one of my favorite experiences in Romania not including the kids. It was just such traditional Romanian, and she was so kind to us! I loved it.

Kelsey and me after our lunch at Sora Grozo's

We met up with Jen in the park to watch a kids movie. Unfortunately that movie turned out to be Alvin and the Chipmunks, so we went to a different part of the park until it was over. We talked for a while and watched some really weird mimes that appeared to be trying to be anamatrons. I don’t know if this is usual for mimes or not since I’ve never seen one before. It was pretty cool, though.

Mime

Mime (Hamlet)

Then How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days came on the screen, so we sat and watched it, got bit by bugs, and wandered home. 

Also, for your entertainment, I present a toy that one of the girls at the hospital had a few days ago:  

Nearly Headless Nick (get it?!?)

Rewind

I've been asked by a few people to recount our midsemester trip, so I suppose I shall do that. I'm too lazy to do it all at once, though. And you don't want to read it all at once, so I'll just go back and write it a day at a time. We'll see if I stick to that.

The first day:

Kels and I got to the train station a few minutes earlier than the other girls Rachel and Cortlandt. They walked up to us and informed us that they had left the phone in the taxi, so they were going to go look and see if the taxi was still there, but we would probably never see it again. They did not find it. The trip was off to a great start. Then we got on the train.

It was night, so we had planned on getting a sleeper train to Bucharesti. Not so. We had been wondering why our tickets were so cheap. Kelsey accidentally got us seats on the 3^rd class part...Where the seats are completely upright, the people are loud, the air is freezing, and the lights are on all night. It was 11 at night when we got on and 7 in the morning when we got off.

We decided to go to the hostel (the YMCA) so that we could take a nap and leave our bags in our lockers there. We had a very confusing encounter with the only worker who was there since he did not speak any English. He seemed a bit frustrated with us, but what we wanted really wasn’t that confusing.

After our delightfully refreshing hour-long nap, we decided to go search for an orange store to buy a prepay phone for the week. We had a surprisingly hard time finding one and stopped at every single phone booth in the city to try to call Mario and my friend, Jen Good since I told her that we would call her to meet up. We finally found the big shopping district, which included an Orange Store, but it turned out that they did not offer prepay phones, so we wandered around a big piata and got overwhelmed by gypsies before getting lunch at a McDonalds with the most confusingly designed bathrooms I have ever seen. 

We then decided to do a walking tour on our own that was based on a map that one of the men at the hostel gave us. This included visits to the peasant museum (which was worth it just for the section with holiday masks that will give me nightmares for years to come), the village museum, and the triumph arch. At the village museum we got followed around by a little girl and her grandfather who was following her. We finally started talking to the little girl and then the grandfather was surprised that we spoke any Romanian since he had heard us speaking English, but then he told us all about his life as a book translator from Romanian to Spanish as well as Romanian to English. It was fascinating. Usually Romanians his age don’t speak English, but he was almost fluent. He was very disappointed that he wasn’t carrying one of his books around to give to us on the spot. 

Kelsey, Me, Rachel, Cortlandt

A lovely sample of the village museum

Kelsey is professional at doing "sneaky shots." This is the grandpa and little girl who were following us.

We ended up eating at Hard Rock Café. I had never been to one. It wasn’t actually very good. We finally found a phone booth that actually worked and didn’t smell too much like urine. We got a hold of Jen and decided to have her pick us up from the YMCA to go to some festival thing some of her friends had a booth at. It turned out to be a huge hippie festival. I’ve seen some Romanian hippies before, but this was something else!

Mural painting at the hippie fest.

More painting. Sometimes people just don't wear shirts.

People were bumping me as a tried to take a pic of this drumline at the hippie fest.

Top of the Morning

This morning might have been my favorite morning so far working in the orphanage. The professors are in town, so they came to visit our apartment for a little while this morning. Of course, the kids did not behave in their normal manner in front of the professors. Danny was way more ADHD than normal, running from toy to toy in a split second. The others were not too far off of the way they normally behave, but they were still confused by the 5 visitors (Aislynn, Mario, and a professor's husband were there, too).
But Angela and I came prepared with questions for the professors. They were very helpful with answering our questions about how to deal with certain misbehaviors and certain teaching styles. It was really helpful, since they only stayed for about half an hour, we were able to implement some of their recommendations already this morning. It will take some time, but I think that it will really improve the help we can provide for these kids and prevent them from hurting one another as well as other people.
The rest of the morning, the kids behaved well, too. Maybe it is because we were already doing what the professors told us to do. We also had our favorite workers at the apartment this morning. It was just a great day overall. The kids in the afternoon were great, too! One of them was a little out of control, but he just got home from a week in the hospital, so we couldn't censure him too much. I would be crazy if I were stuck in the hospital, too.
When we got home for lunch, I got to eat some leftover chili and 2 Cremosso yogurts (oops). I'm also e-mailing Dannon today to tell them that they need to sell Cremosso yogurt in the United States. It's the most delicious yogurt in the world. Mmmmmm....I really want to eat another one right now, too.
The chilli is left over from our big group dinner on Tuesday night. We made dinner for ourselves, the professors, Mario, and Robby. We made Kelsey's amazingly delicious Georgia chili recipe and got delightful Romanian bread and Podu Ros made gogosi (like donuts.) Basically it was fantastic even though we didn't get to eat it for an hour since the professors were late. We then had a long meeting with the professors. They were shocked that only 5 girls out of the 14 of us have our own beds. I don't know how this wasn't known at BYU. Some girls have had to share beds since the program got a second apartment and now we have 3. Really I think that BYU just needs to buy a house out here, or at least outright buy an apartment. I think it would be more fiscally responsible in the long run. The program has already been running for 13 years. I can't imagine it's going to end anytime soon.
We went to visit 2 monasteries with the professors. They are from the 13th century and have somehow survived all this time (with paint renovations and such.) They were beautiful. I'll have to put pictures of them up once the professor downloads them.

I Broke a World Record!

Friday was great at the apartment. It was Children’s Day in Romania, so the older kids got to go to a theater show. Angela and I just had *Danny and *Gary for the day. It was also the first day of Chris’ month long vacation, so it was just us while some other workers cooked in the kitchen. Chris being gone means we will no longer have anyone to translate or explain how things run to us. Luckily we had him for a while so we have a schedule set. Angela and I take turns taking each kid out of the room to work with him on the Brigance. They are much more willing to work when they are one on one. It also doesn’t hurt that we give them stickers when they are good (although I’m not sure if they quite grasp that correlation yet.) We’re working with Gary right now on not pulling other people’s hair. It’s not working. That child has a grip of iron. 

Anyway, on Friday, Gary and Danny were little angels almost the whole time! This is quite unusual. They absolutely love music, so we sang to them a bit. (Angela has a fantastic voice, though we will miss Chris’ guitar.) Danny hums Twinkle Twinkle Little Star all the time. He kept doing this thing on Friday where he would be standing across the room from me doing his little swaying dance, I would look up and beam at him, and he would suddenly smile and run over to me for a hug.

Friday at the hospital we found yet another child who I fell in love with. She doesn’t have a first name since she was abandoned at some center (I don’t understand how any of the kids have last names when they’re abandoned. She had a last name. I tried to ask Chris once, but he didn’t really understand my English.) So I took the liberty of dubbing her Cassie. She is a beautiful Aryan baby with blue eyes and a heart-melting smile and very gross poop. I told her that she can marry Scotty, the first baby who I held in the hospital. Speaking of Scotty, I’m worried about him, they moved him back to the ICU for some reason. Aaaaah!

Last night we joined in this lantern lighting festival near our apartment. We were trying to get into the Guinness book of World Records for the most floating lanterns and we made it (12,700)! 

all the girls

Aislynn, Camille, Kelsey, Chelsea, Me

Chameleon and Me

Pretty much I single handedly made history. I’m still a little in shock that nothing lit on fire, though. There were a lot of wires and trees where we lit them. Some of them were stuck on telephone poles burning for a while and one was on one of the Cultural Palace spires for a while. We only saw one that they had to use a fire extinguisher on, though.

Mormons at the Beerfest

Today was unbelievably fun! In the morning, I went to the apartment. The boys didn’t misbehave any more than usual and the English speaking worker was there to help out even though we thought he was going to be gone today. I rode a different tram home by myself today. This messed everyone else up so we all had to be alone, but it also split my travel time from an hour to a half hour, so…yeah…

The man who sells the tickets recognizes me. Actually he recognized me the second day I bought some. We’re pals now. I always wave at him as he glowers at me. It’s a mutual friendship. I think the only English he knows is to count to four, which he does for me in counting out the tickets when it pleases him. I find this humorous since I ask for the tickets in Romanian and clearly say '4' in Romanian. Also, he only does it half of the time.

We took the afternoon kids to a nearby field today to play outside in. I felt terrible for a little boy in a wheelchair who just had to watch the other boys running around. So naturally I grabbed him and put him on my back and ran around with him. It’s the first time I’ve seen him react to anything, and it was with a smile and laughter! But then of course we had to give all of the other boys piggyback rides (the worker got very nervous when I picked up the youngest, so I just walked him around). And then they all decided to pee in the field. I guess I would have too if I were their age and male.

All these shenanigans made Rachel and I miss our bus. Luckily one came pretty quickly, but when we tried to get on in the front, no one else was on and the driver started speaking to us very quickly in Romanian. So then we tried to go in the middle door. Then he started speaking very swiftly again and looked frustrated. We just looked really confused and told him we didn’t speak Romanian. We finally got the impression that another bus was coming and we would have to get on that. We’re still not sure why. I think he was taking a break.

We finally got on the right bus and my apartment and one of the other apartments decided to go to the beerfest for dinner. It was really just a festival that was sponsored by a beer company, so don't worry. (At least that's what we think since there actually didn't seem to be that much beer.) It was quite family friendly.

We were trying to figure out how to ask for a kebab in Romanian and were puzzling over it for quite some time. One of the girls went up to order by just pointing at a kebab. Then the worker started speaking to her in English. Nice. We drank out of our delightful, water filled bottles while all the people who were drinking beer stared at us.

We walked by a bread shop and I mentioned to the girls that one of the workers was rather cute. A bus drove by and all of the girls went to one side of the road while Rylie and I went to the other side (near the bread shop). She loudly remarked “You just want to be by the worker you thought was cute!” I was really embarrassed because enough people here speak English that—yep, he just waved, smiled, and winked at me.

Chelsea bought some cotton candy and was stuck with the stick that it came on after we finished all of the cotton candy. Then she was fortunate enough to spot a little boy holding the same stick! A sword fight must ensue! It was pretty humorous for about thirty seconds until she accidentally knocked his stick out of his hands and he looked up to see 13 American girls and his parents laughing hysterically. He wouldn’t perform again after that, though his dad tired to talk him into being a man or some such thing.

We then decided to go join the crowd watching performers rap on stage. (Romanian rappers are HIGHLY amusing). But NO ONE WAS DANCING. It was weird. We also discovered that if you get near people at concerts here, they actually move! It was spectacular. At one point, I tried to get on Chelsea’s shoulders, but she flatteringly couldn’t stand up with me on her back, so we gave up while the boys behind us died of laughter.

I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of boys trying to get into our group until two guys creeped us out enough that we decided it was time to go home. And that was the end of the Mormons at the beerfest.

Busy as a BYU intern

This week we finally got our assignments. We put our top three choices for the morning and for the afternoon on a note card and Aislynn, our facilitator, assigned us to different places. I’m actually not working in the orphanage at all. The orphanage has satellite apartments that they send the higher functioning kids to so they can live in a more “normal” environment. I work at one of these every morning with Angela Monday through Friday. Then MWF afternoons, I work in the hospital with 7 other BYU girls. And TTH afternoons, I work in another satellite apartment with Rachel.

We got super lost on the way there on Monday morning. It was traumatic. I repeated this thought about 17 times to Angela while we were lost. I'm sure it helped her peace of mind.

I love all of my kids so much. I’m already catching on to some of their mannerisms. It also really helps that one of the workers in my morning apartment speaks English (EXTREMELY well). It is actually rather intimidating because I think he expects our Romanian to be a lot better than it is because his English is so amazing. Oops.

The morning apartment only has 6 little boys, but only 4 of them are there in the mornings (one goes to school and the other goes to the orphanage in the mornings).

The afternoon apartment I have only gone to once and it was only for about an hour and a half, so I don’t know those kids as well yet, but they are adorable and one of them is extremely talkative, so I better learn to understand him soon.

I have dubbed one of the little boys in the hospital Scotty because I don’t know his name. He is the first one I held in the hospital a week or so ago. He is doing much better now than he was when I first held him in the ICU. He is still a little blue, but his rash looks much better and his breathing is slightly better, though still very odd sounding. We also went to visit a boy from the orphanage. He is easily the most popular kid in the hospital. There is always a crowd of people in his room, especially when all 6 to 8 of the BYU girls in the hospital go in to visit him and bring tons of toys. On Monday he asked that all of the BYU girls give him a kiss and beckoned each of us while presenting his cheek. He is so presumptuous. Today I said ‘pup’ (yes, that means kiss) and he said ‘nu!’ and wouldn’t give me one. So offensive.

I changed 2 diapers today. The first time in about 4 years and probably the 3^rd and 4^th diapers I have ever changed. I would say I done good. We played with one of our favorite babies for a while. He is an unbelievably attractive and content baby. The same mom and little girl were in the room with him. I gave the little girl a small toy dog, which she loved. The poor girl must be so bored being in there all day everyday, but with our language barrier, I came to the conclusion that she is leaving tomorrow.

I get to see the boys at the afternoon apartment again tomorrow! I’m so excited.

At FHE on Monday, we played a surprisingly fun game with dice and writing numbers. Apparently it's really popular at BYU. I guess I'm not very popular at BYU since I haven't played it in years. It got pretty loud in there with almost all girls in the room.
We all are fans of this boy who is taking discussions from the missionaries (and speaks english) and we're all generally very friendly. So when he walked into institute on Tuesday, he grinned while looking around and said "buna," knowing what the response would be. The loud chorus of "BUNA ZIUA" from 15 girls clearly did not disappoint him.
There was also a new boy at institute on Tuesday, he looked delighted with the room full of girls and walked around introducing himself to all of us. (Background: we have certain phrases that all of us have memorized and say all the time some of these include "my name is," "what is your name?" "I love you," "nice to meet you," and "how are you?") One of the girls, clearly meaning to ask the boy what his name was, said: te iubesc (I love you). We all stared at her...and then she repeated herself. We then drew attention to her mistake. I'm sure the boy was very flattered, though. At least his smile said so.

Ais says I need more emotion in this. It's already outrageously long.

Răzbunătorii

Friday night, we went to see the Avengers. The movie was in English with Romanian subtitles. I can’t believe people pay to go to the movie theatre to read subtitles. It was a good movie. We had to see it in 3D since it was the only option, but it wasn’t very 3D-esque. The Romanians were VERY excited about the reference to shaorma at the end of the movie. (I had some on Thursday and it was DELICIOUS, though not as good as a doner).

Yesterday was Kelsey’s birthday. We went to Iasi’s Botanical gardens. They are the largest in Romania and definitely deserve the title. They’re HUGE! We got lost and may have wandered out of the park at some point, but we still don’t even know. Camille and Kelsey whined the whole time when I led them on a grass covered, albeit slightly muddy, path to get back to the park. I have to say, though, it really was a hike. We were trying to avoid walking up the macho pichu stairs of death, but ended up in Nauvoo swampyness instead. It was awesome, though. There was an entire section full of roses. They weren’t in bloom yet, though, so we’ll have to go back again later. They have flowers that are native to Romania as well as plants from all over the world. Mom would have a hay-day in there.

Kelsey and me at the gardens

We came home and chilled until dinner time when we went to the pizza hut across the street. It’s way more upscale here and is a sit-down restaurant with waiters and menus. One of the apartments made Kelsey a cake that we ate before the pizza arrived because we’re impatient and do what we want.

Fancy Pizza Hut

We came home and attempted to make some chocolate chip cookies in our horrible oven. They were rather black on the bottom. But we had them with delicious ice cream while watching Kelsey’s favorite movie (A Knight’s Tale) so it was okay. 

I was planning on not having church translated today, so Chelsea and I sat in a random row. As soon as the 1^st councilor got up to say the announcements, we realized didn’t understand anything…so we snuck to the back and had one of the missionaries translate for us. We were also sitting by an investigator who was shocked to learn that church was three hours long.We tried to reassure him that it wasn't too bad. He was not convinced.

The adorable RS president got Kelsey flowers for her birthday today, so that was awesome. 

Chelsea just told me I look like Dory from Finding Nemo. I’ve never been more offended in my life. She specifically pointed out this picture from 2008: